Celltick Technologies Ltd. (hereinafter “Celltick” the Applicants of the present invention) have invented an idle screen platform for mostly silently streaming display messages on personal cellular telecommunications devices as illustrated and described in PCT International Publication No. WO 01/52572, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. Display messages each include one or more display components which may be information items, for example, news items, sports items, and the like, or adverts for goods, services, and the like. The display components can be text only, graphic only, multimedia clips, combinations of same, and the like. Display messages can be interactive or non-interactive. Interactive display components enable a user to obtain additional content in the case of an interactive information item or additional advertising information in the case of an interactive advert. Interactive display components necessarily require at least one user click for activating an outbound response mechanism for obtaining additional information. User clicks for invoking interactive display components differ between personal cellular telecommunications devices depending on their Man Machine Interfaces (MMIs) and include inter alia depressing a pushbutton, selecting a soft key, selecting a touch screen option, and the like. Outbound response mechanisms include inter alia placing a voice call to a call center, sending a text message to a 3rd party, initiating a data session, for example, a WAP session, a USSD session, and the like. Invoking of some interactive display components leads to displaying an interactive option menu listing at least two outbound response mechanisms. Some interactive option menus may include the same type of outbound response mechanism twice but having different destinations, for example, browsing to two different WAP pages, placing voice calls to two different callback numbers, and the like.
Celltick market their idle screen platform under the tradename LIVESCREEN™. Further information is available online at www.celltick.com. Celltick's idle screen platform is being commercially implemented by an ever increasing list of cellular operators around the world who typically brand their idle screen service. For example, Vodafone in India have launched the service under the name Vodafone Flash. Cellular operators typically prefer to implement their idle screen service with a single display message format for display messages for facilitating user acceptance and promoting user interaction with display messages. The most popular display message formats are illustrated and described below with reference to FIGS. 4A to 4C. Over 40 million mobile users worldwide are now viewing millions of display messages, clicking on millions of interactive display components, and ordering considerable volumes of goods and services.
Cellular operators can transmit transmission messages with one or more display components ready for immediate display as display messages on personal cellular telecommunications devices. Alternatively, cellular operators can transmit transmission messages with one or more display components for initial storage in carousels of display components. Carousels can be general purpose or dedicated for particular types of display components, for example, information items only, adverts only, and the like. Personal cellular telecommunications devices can select one or more display components for display as display messages. Cellular operators can transmit transmission messages including display components over either Point-To-Point (P2P) or Point-To-MultiPoint (P2MP) transmission technologies.
Mobile industry participants including inter alia cellular operators, content providers, service providers, mobile advertisers, and the like, have considerable interest in user interaction information for profiling purposes, segmentation purposes, revenue sharing schemes, and the like.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,745,011 to Hendrickson et al. illustrates and describes systems and methods for measuring wireless device and wireless network usage and performance metrics. The system includes a wireless device with a processor and memory, data gathering software installed on the wireless device for logging event data 240, device parametric data 230a, network parametric data 220a, location information 250a and time information 260a (see Col. 7, lines 63 to 68). A plurality of wireless devices may be distributed to a panel of selected users. Automatic data delivery may be triggered on a periodic basis, or alternatively data delivery may be launched via user or control center driven activity.
Event data 240a includes any data relating to activity on the device by a user. For example, event data includes data from data applications, device applications and event statistics. Data application includes, for example, microbrowser or equivalent internet browsing activity, web clipping applications, mobile commerce transactions, mobile advertising activity, e-mail activity, and Bluetooth applications. Device applications include, for example, games, address books, personal management software and media players used for streaming audio and video (see Col. 8, lines 11 to 23).
Data gathered by the data gathering software is transmitted via a wireless link to a control center that manages the logging and quality control processes of the data from each wireless device in the field as well as the overall administration of the network. A data warehouse/mining application processes the collected data to generate information including usage, service functionality, network and device performance metrics.
FIGS. 5a to 5d set forth samples of event type data gathered by the data gathering software and locations from which various metrics corresponding to event types are gathered. FIG. 5b-2 shows the event types for M-Advertising are as follows:
Event TypeMetricsMSM LocationAd DisplayedTD-LLBrowserUPIDGPS ProcessorAd IDAd SelectedTD-LLBrowserUPIDGPS ProcessorAd ID
TD-LL Stands for Time, Date, Long-Lat
Sample reports are divided into three categories as follows: First, Usage, Audience, and Purchase Products. Second, Network/Device Performance Products. And third, Integrated Products. Sample product reports of the Usage, Audience, and Purchase Products category include inter alia Data Traffic Report, Voice Statistics Report, Demographics Report, M-commerce Report, Non-Web Digital Media Report, Advertising Report, User Experience Report, and Technical Report (see Col. 13, line 45 to Col. 14, line 51). The Advertising Report includes Ads viewed/redeemed, Top advertisers, Top host sites, Reach and Cut by demographics (see Col. 14, line 34 to line 39).
U.S. Pat. No. 6,968,175 to Raivisto et al. illustrates and describes a method and system for revenue sharing between mobile operators and content providers. The content providers, through a data network, provide data services to the end users of the mobile operators. For the data services, the content providers are paid by the mobile operators based on the revenue collected by the mobile operators from the end users using the services. An intermediate proxy is disposed between a mobile operator and the data network to keep track of the data amount transmitted by the content providers and the users and to keep track of the revenue sharing agreements established between that mobile operator and the content providers. Additionally, an intermediate proxy is linked to each content provider to keep track of the data amount transmitted to the end users via a mobile operator and to keep track of the revenue sharing agreement with that mobile operator.